Open Up Your Heart
by minachandler
Summary: A few days into their road trip, Felicity suggests she and Oliver play a game. To her surprise, Oliver ends up opening up a lot more than Felicity anticipated.


."Hey, Oliver," she says. He looks up, smiles, and there's something beautiful about the way his eyes light up and shine with contentment as he gazes up at her from where he's lying on his front on their bed. They're munching on blueberry muffins Oliver got from the cafe next to their hotel along with warm cups of coffee (Felicity's with extra sugar, just how she likes it).

"Yeah?"

"Let's play a game."

He raises his eyebrows in question. "What kind of game?"

"Say, when you tell me something about you that I don't know, and then _I_ tell you something you don't know about me..."

"I get it," Oliver says, but he's still smiling. "But... I mean, what is there about you that I don't know?"

Felicity taps her nose. "Lots of things."

"Like what?"

"Can't find out if you don't play," she teases. "You first."

For a moment, Oliver looks like he's going to argue, but she decides from the look on his face that he secretly likes being bossed around by her.

"Okay. Uh... my favourite colour –"

"– isn't green," Felicity finishes for him. "It's blue."

"How did you know that?" he says, perplexed but also mildly impressed.

She just shrugs. "Green is too obvious. That's more, like, your _theme._ Blue you wear a lot. And you associate it with... tranquillity. Calm."

At first, he doesn't say anything, just regards her with the kind of wonder that she's gotten used to over the last few golden days with him, lips ever so slightly parted. Felicity reaches up, brushing away the crumbs that are still on the corner of his mouth.

"And yours is... red?" he tries.

" _Your_ favourite colour on me is red," Felicity whispers, her tone gently mocking, and Oliver laughs.

"True."

"Next question." Oliver opens his mouth to object and she holds her hand up to stop him. "I'll let you have another guess later."

"Fine."

Oliver sits up, balling up the muffin wrappers, and with his perfect aim they land straight into the bin at the other end of the room. Then Felicity edges up the bed towards him, until her head is resting against the pillows and her hand is on his chest.

"First kiss?" she asks.

"You first," he says, and Felicity grins back.

"Okay. I was... fourteen, and it was at a Christmas party. There was this boy from school there – his name was... Michael. And, yeah, he kissed me. Under the mistletoe."

Her confession is met initially with Oliver's silence.

"Huh," he says after a moment.

"What?"

Oliver just smiles, though. "Nothing. Just – I can't imagine you as a teenager."

She laughs too. "Yeah, I wasn't the same person back then. I didn't have blonde hair, for starters. But, I mean, it was nice. As first kisses go, anyway." Felicity pokes at his chest. "You now."

"I was twelve, I think?" Oliver says, and his brow is furrowed as he tries to remember. "Or thirteen, maybe. And my friends kind of dared me to kiss this girl in the year above me... Kathy, I think her name was. Or Kristy. Or Krystal. Something like that."

"I'm guessing you only got the one kiss from her," Felicity says. At this, Oliver nudges her playfully on her shoulder. "What? You must have if you can't remember her name."

"In my defence, it lasted about three seconds. You know, before I took one look at her face and decided to run away."

She rolls her eyes. "Fair enough. Okay."

There's silence and it must be obvious that she's hesitating because then Oliver leans forward, presses a kiss on her forehead. "We're still playing, right?"

Finally, she looks up at him, meeting his eyes. "First time?"

Immediately, though, she regrets opening her mouth at the look on his face. "Hey, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

But then to her surprise, Oliver catches her hand in his and squeezes. "It's not that I don't want to."

"No," Felicity says, her gaze dropping, "forget I said anything –"

"It was Laurel," he interrupts, and seconds later, his finger is under her chin, lifting her face to his. "And it's not that I don't want to talk about it – it's just that I don't want to make you feel weird. You know, since you two are friends and everything."

"It's not weird," she says. Oliver just gives her a look, though, and Felicity amends, "Okay, it is a bit, but it's all right. She was your first love. Makes sense." She looks up at him, encouraging but not pressing him, waiting for him to speak.

Now Oliver is the one who looks hesitant. "We were – young. About fifteen. Laurel's parents were out for the evening and Sara was at a sleepover, or something, and... we had the place to ourselves. We had been together a couple weeks already, but we hadn't said anything to Tommy."

"The three of you were like the Three Musketeers, huh?" she says, and to her relief, he smiles.

"Something like that. We didn't want him to feel left out, you know? So he didn't know. And it wasn't like either of us really knew what we were doing, but still, it was – back then, Laurel and I were close. Emotionally. And it was the first time in my life that I felt I had, I don't know, really connected to someone."

Oliver has this faraway look on his face, the one she's come to recognise over the last few days as he's recounted other memories to her. And just like those other times, she can see pain there, too, in his eyes, in the way his fingers curl a little tighter around the comforter as he pulls it to cover their legs. "So what happened?" Felicity asks. "To, you know, make you decide to..." But then she realises what she's about to say and stops in her tracks. "Sorry, I didn't mean –"

But Oliver shakes his head. "It's okay," he says softly. "What changed to make me decide it was a good idea to cheat on her – with her sister no less?"

Felicity just nods, her hand going to his arm, her forefinger tracing along each of his veins. Her touch seems to calm him, take the edge off the pain she can see in his crinkled brow even if he isn't looking her in the eyes. "You don't have to tell me," she whispers.

"I know," Oliver says faintly, still not quite meeting her gaze, "but you asked. And if it's you asking..."

Despite herself, Felicity smiles, before stretching her legs a little and adjusting her position on her pillow.

There's silence, though, as Oliver opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying and failing to get the words out.

"I didn't know it was meant to hurt," he says at last. "For her, anyway."

"It doesn't always hurt," she tries to say but the guilt she can see in his eyes doesn't shift an inch. "It didn't for me, not really."

"It did for her. And it was... messier than I thought, too, and – I just felt like if I was hurting her, then what was the point? What was some _connection_ if it meant she was in pain?"

"It would've gotten easier. With time," Felicity reasons. "But obviously you didn't know that."

He shakes his head.

"I didn't. I was just a kid. We both were. Anyway. I – broke things off with her the next day. Told her it was a mistake. Even though I was sure just from that one time with her that – that I loved her. Especially because she kept telling me she was okay, that it wasn't so bad, that... anyway, after that, for a couple months we stopped talking altogether."

"I'm sorry," Felicity says quietly, squeezing his hand.

"Years later I told her the truth – when we were a bit older, eighteen, nineteen, maybe. And all that time before that we'd been seeing other people – me more than her," he adds as an afterthought.

"Colour me not at all surprised," she says before she can stop herself, but thankfully, Oliver chuckles.

"It wasn't like that. Not exactly. But... I kind of went from girl to girl on purpose. It was like – I was looking for that connection – the one I had with that first time I had with Laurel."

"But you didn't," Felicity says. "Until Sara."

His head is bowed and he's looking away from her now. "I'm not proud of it. God knows, of all the things I've done, hurting someone who was meant to be my first love is something I don't know if I can ever forgive myself for. But back then I didn't think... I never would have thought that I would lose her. Laurel. That was why – before I left on the Gambit, Laurel gave me a photo of her. And some days when I thought I was going to die of starvation on the island, I used to just stare at it, for... hours. And I would promise her that I would find my way home, if only to make it right with her. Because I wanted to believe – I _had_ to believe that when I made it back, I would fix things. But what I didn't realise is that even if she forgave me –"

"– you never really forgave yourself," Felicity finishes for him.

He looks surprised. "Wow. You really can read me like a book."

And for some reason, her heart soars – in the way it always does when he recalls her exact words to him months ago. Felicity smiles, and he smiles back.

"Why were you nervous telling me about Laurel?" she asks.

"Honestly? I didn't want you to think – I love _you_ , Felicity. Whatever Laurel and I had is in the past."

"That's not necessarily true," Felicity says. "You'll always love Laurel –"

"Felicity –"

"– and that's okay," she continues. "She's always been in your life and you've always been in hers, in some capacity. You can do that and I'm not going to – get jealous, or anything. I definitely wouldn't see her as standing between you and me. I mean – when I came back from Nanda Parbat, you know who I went to first?"

"You went to Laurel?"

"After... everything that happened, with us, Thea, having to leave you there on that hellhole – my head was all over the place," she confesses. "More so than I ever let on, to anyone. Except Laurel. She was there for me. And it wasn't that everyone else wasn't. But she knew how I felt. Exactly how I felt."

"Because she'd been there herself," Oliver says eventually. He looks up, meets her eyes properly, before tucking her hair behind her right ear, and for the longest time they just gaze at each other, neither of them saying a thing. Then he leans forward, pressing a kiss on her lips. "You're right. She was my first love. And I loved her for a long time. And she'll always be in my life – in our lives. But you're the one I want to..."

He trails off for some reason, and Felicity smiles. "I'm the one you want to... what, exactly?" She tries to ask it innocently, but it comes out more suggestive than she intends anyway. And then, without warning, he's grabbing her by the waist and flipping them over in one move so he is lying on top of her, at the perfect position to plant a kiss on the hollow of her throat.

"Thank you," Felicity says, a little breathless, and Oliver lifts his face (from where it's buried in her neck) to hers.

"For what?"

"Opening up to me. You know I love it when you do that."

Oliver smiles back. "You're welcome."

She rewards him with a kiss, and inadvertently she lets out a moan of frustration when after only a few moments he pulls away.

"What?" she says, trying and failing to hide her pout.

"Purple."

" _What_?"

"Your favourite colour. It's purple."

Felicity laughs. "Nope."

"I get three guesses, right?"

"I'll tell you for free if you shut up and kiss me."

And it's as Oliver proceeds to do exactly that that Felicity comes to the conclusion that, yes, he definitely likes it when she gets bossy.


End file.
